By Highlighting Gains in Affordable Housing, de Blasio Raises a Counting Question

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that his administration had financed more than 17,300 affordable homes in its first year in office, a figure that he said put New York City on track to fulfill his pledge to preserve or create 200,000 affordable units over 10 years.

But Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, might take issue with the new mayor’s accounting.

Mr. Bloomberg, who had his own affordable housing goal of 165,000 units, said before he left office that 160,000 of the homes would be completed by the time his final term ended in 2013, with the rest on track to be finished by June 2014 — the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year.

According to the Independent Budget Office, about 8,700 units were included in either new construction or preservation projects that received financing — the point at which they are counted toward the city’s housing goals — from January 2014 to June 2014. That means they spanned both the 2013-14 fiscal year, which began under Mr. Bloomberg, and the 2014 calendar year, Mr. de Blasio’s first 12 months in City Hall.

By that measure, both mayors may be able to claim credit for the units, but the actual gain to the city is still just 8,700.

“It’s good for them that they were here for the second part” of the fiscal year, Elizabeth Brown, a supervising analyst with the Independent Budget Office, said of the de Blasio administration. She noted that a large amount of housing financing is finalized at the end of a fiscal year and that Mr. Bloomberg would be likely to say, “My administration was involved in the deal even before the financing closed.”

Mr. de Blasio discussed his administration’s efforts during a news conference on Monday at a low-income co-op in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where the city invested more than $3 million for repairs intended to maintain 159 apartments.

Mr. de Blasio said at the news conference that he was claiming credit only for units that his administration brought “to the finish line.”

Of the more than 17,300 homes cited by the mayor, 11,185 were existing units that the city preserved by providing financial incentives, including loans for rehabilitation work. Officials said the city had guaranteed construction of another 6,191 affordable homes in new buildings by securing financing through government subsidy programs.

Mr. de Blasio said the city had exceeded its projections for the first year by about 1,300 affordable units. “It gives us great confidence about our ability to keep hitting the numbers year in and year out,” he said.

To meet the mayor’s 10-year goal, the administration must eventually increase the count to an average of 20,000 a year.

Jerilyn Perrine, a former housing commissioner under both Mr. Bloomberg and Rudolph W. Giuliani, and now executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a research organization, said that every mayor winds up with projects begun under a previous administration.

“That’s how it’s always been,” she said. “In the housing world it has to be, because of how long it takes to get things started.”

“The first year is hard,” Ms. Perrine added. “They’re getting new programs off the ground and at the same time trying not to kill everything already in the pipeline.”

About 70 percent of the 17,300 units cited by the mayor will go to families with an annual income of about $42,000 to $67,000, officials said.

Some housing advocates said they were not impressed with the numbers and that the mayor should be pressing developers more forcefully to create more homes for the city’s poorest residents.

“While we are glad to see the de Blasio administration focus on affordable housing, the progress report released today shows that low-income New Yorkers still need a lot more real affordability, especially in new housing construction,” Real Affordability for All, a coalition of groups advocating for more affordable housing, said in a statement.

The Fort Greene residents who will benefit from the city’s preservation efforts are low-income co-op owners — households earning less than $60,000 a year — who risked having to sell their apartments in a gentrifying area as their building deteriorated and their bills mounted. In exchange for the city’s loans and other capital funding that will go toward repairs and keeping fees low, residents agreed that any units sold over the next 30 years would go to buyers of modest means.

Many of the residents had feared being forced out of a neighborhood where some of them were born because of rising maintenance costs, said Sheryl Morse, president of the co-op’s board.

“You can hear all the numbers,” Ms. Morse said of the figures heralded by the mayor, “but we’re here to let you know it has an impact on people.”

In the end, some say, it does not really matter which administration gets bragging rights for creating affordable housing.

“It’s all housing for New Yorkers,” Ms. Brown, of the Independent Budget Office, said. “You want the mayors to meet their housing goals, but it’s just a technicality at this point. It really depends on how they set your expectations.”

Charles V. Bagli contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: By Highlighting Housing Gains, de Blasio Raises a Counting Question. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe